Location-based services are changing social media marketing in a big way. The phenomenon of the real-time “check-in” -– and the value associated with it -– give marketers a rich new vein of customer interaction and information to tap. Foursquare is a leader in the growing space of location-based services, and BART was one of their first brand partnerships. Since then other brands from media (HBO, New York Times at Vancouver Olympics) to education (Harvard) and cuisine (Zagat) have joined in.

Tristan will give an overview of Foursquare and the brand representatives (BART plus one to be named) will talk about their experiences in partnering with Foursquare, and give practical examples of how location-based marketing has helped their businesses. They can also talk about the potential pitfalls and how you sell an early-adopter concept in your organization.

How do you navigate the nay-sayers who say “that’s too small a niche of customers to worry about” or question “how will you measure the results?”

BART, as Foursquare’s earliest brand partner, will have been at this for 9 months by the time of the Expo and can share results of market research it has done – for example, how using Foursquare has changed customers’ usage of its services and created opportunities for increased ridership. We also can talk about the issues faced when two partners have completely different corporate cultures and how you overcome that – how both in fact can benefit from it.

Melissa Jordan

Bay Area Rapid Transit

Melissa Jordan has worked at BART as senior marketing representative since June 2008. Her areas of responsibility include content management for the www.bart.gov website and development of BART’s social web strategy. She produces BART’s Twitter feed at www.twitter.com/sfbart and blogs at sfbart.posterous.com. Before joining BART, she spent two decades as a reporter and editor for news organizations including The Associated Press and the San Jose Mercury News. She is a graduate of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the University of Georgia.

Comments

Very enjoyable and enlightening presentation. Right now I’m thinking about Foursquare presentations for our business. Thank you.

Melissa Jordan

04/30/2010 1:32pm PDT

LBS market research survey to be released at BART/Foursquare session

Love it or hate it, you’d have to be under a rock to have missed the media buzz about check-ins and location-based services. A New York Times archive search returns 3890 results mentioning Foursquare alone! (Disclosure: NYT is among 4sq’s partners, as is BART.)

If you think it’s all hype and want to see some cold, hard facts backing up how location does (or doesn’t) affect customer behavior, come to our session at the Web 2.0 Expo. BART conducted a survey of Foursquare-using customers between January and March 2010, and we’ll be releasing the results at this session.

Find out:

How using Foursquare and other location-based services changed customers’ experiences on BART

How their behavior was affected

What would they like to get out of “checking in”

What devices are they using for Foursquare

What competing services are they using

What’s their demographic makeup – by age, gender, income

What is their favorite color (yes, this was a real question, we’ll tell you why)

Also: Foursquare’s head of business development will be there to give you the very latest on the strategy for brand partnerships of the company that seems like it’s signing a new deal every day.

And if that’s not enough, we’ll be giving out buttons with the BART “Trainspotter” badge for frequent ridership. So you can wear one in real life, even if you haven’t earned the virtual one yet.

Out-of-town visitors to the Expo: it’s an easy ride in to downtown San Francisco from SFO – so take BART to get there! Go to www.bart.gov to plan your trip or to m.bart.gov on your mobile.